by Jack Halls
“All right, team.” It was their squad leader, Takomi Tsukamoto. “Advance to NAV alpha on my mark.” A yellow navigational beacon appeared on Gideon’s AR display. “Joseph, cover our advance. Three, two, one, mark.”
Gideon lurched forward into the loping gate of someone running in low gravity. Three of his teammates ran alongside him, each one named on his display. The fastest way to NAV alpha would have been one giant leap forward. With his Sentinel Armor’s augmented strength and the moon’s low gravity, it would have been an easy thing to do. The problem was that if the enemy fired at Gideon while he was halfway through a long leap, he would have no way to stop or turn his body to return fire.
They took their places behind cover at NAV alpha. Once again, they scanned the terrain, and Takomi signaled for Joseph to move up. He bounded forward like a lumbering bear.
Once Joseph was safe behind cover, Takomi marked the next NAV beacon. “Gideon, you cover.”
Settling into position, Gideon leaned out to get the best possible view of the terrain ahead. The others ran forward to the next layer of cover.
As they ran, Gideon’s mind returned to the conversation between his mother and Doctor Marcus the day before. All day he’d wondered if he’d heard them correctly, and all night he lay awake trying to decide if he should talk to his mother about it. It was crazy to think someone aboard the Leviathan would seriously consider blowing something up. It was their ark, their only hope of survival out here in the Void. No one aboard the massive starship would dream of intentionally damaging their home.
An alarm beeped in his ear, and a warning light flashed on his display. He raised his rifle a fraction of a second too late. Incoming small arms fire ricocheted off the container right in front of his face. He managed to squeeze off a few wild shots before ducking behind cover.
He yelled into his com. “Contact right.” Of course, his team’s AR displays would have already warned them, but the redundant verbal warning was one of a thousand little procedures drilled into his brain.
Shots hit the container behind him as his team yelled to each other. Gideon raised the camera of his rifle muzzle over the top of the container and identified three hostiles. His AI calculated a ballistic trajectory as he loaded a grenade into the breach. On the AR display, Joseph’s icon changed from blue to yellow. KIA.
“Dammit,” muttered Gideon as he adjusted the angle of his weapon according to his AI’s suggestions. The hollow thump of the grenade launcher was muffled by his armor’s automatic noise dampeners. He raised the camera over the top of the crate in time to see the grenade explode next to a small vehicle, and one of the enemy icons flashed and turned yellow.
The next grenade round was in the breach and ready to launch when Takomi’s icon flashed and went yellow. A second later, the other two squad members turned yellow too.
“Crap,” he said and lifted his rifle to fire off the second grenade. Before he could fire it off, his helmet sounded the alarm that signaled incoming munitions. With legs strengthened by his armor’s graphene muscles, he leapt away. A second later, the grenade exploded behind him.
Even in the low gravity, he came down hard and slammed into a metal crate, losing his grip on his rifle. It spun away and cartwheeled across the moon’s surface. Small arms fire rang out from behind him as he reached for his sidearm strapped to his thigh. In one motion, he dove behind the crate and spun around to fire back at the enemy.
The small crate provided little cover, and he was up against at least two hostiles. Without his rifle’s muzzle camera, he had to risk poking his head out from behind cover. Concentrated fire kept him from getting a good look at his enemies, but it was more than enough for his AI to pinpoint their locations. Three red icons appeared on his display, fanning out to flank him. He pulled a grenade from his belt and set a three-second delay with maximum burst.
When it was likely the closest enemy was in range, he lobbed the grenade backwards over the crate. The moment after it exploded, he risked another glance around his cover and his AI confirmed the kill.
There was no time to celebrate his lucky hit before his helmet alarm warned him of another incoming grenade. He launched himself away from the crate as the explosion ripped it to shreds. Shrapnel tore into his legs, and he collapsed as soon as he hit the ground, unable to stand. It was all he could do to flip over and point his sidearm toward the enemy, but it was too late. Bullets ripped into him, and a second later, the words, “You Are Dead” appeared on his display.
The simulation ended, and the illusion of the moon base faded away to be replaced by the matte grey obstacles that added the physical dimension to the training exercise. The obstacles were made of long rods that came up out of the ground to create shapes and terrain. The training field had thousands of these rods, and could be programmed to create an infinite number of simulated scenes.
As the rods receded back into the ground, Gideon removed his helmet. The moment he did so, someone smacked the back of his head.
“Ow!” He spun around to see Takomi glaring at him. She held her helmet against her hip, straight black hair in a ponytail. “What was that for?”
“For getting us all killed, moron. You were supposed to cover us, remember? Did you fall asleep?”
It wasn’t far from the truth. “I’m sorry. They came out of nowhere. You know the defenders always have the advantage.”
Gideon could see the cadets from the opposing team giving each other high fives and sending taunts their way.
Takomi looked away from them and scoffed at Gideon. “So, what, you just hand it to them?”
Joseph walked over to where they were standing, flashing a smile full of bright white teeth.
“Don’t worry about it, Takomi. You’ll get it next time.”
Joseph slapped Gideon on the back and sent him stumbling forward.
“Those were some pretty sweet moves you pulled at the end there, Gid. I can’t believe you nailed Raj with that blind grenade throw.”
“That was pure luck. It was the only thing I could think of.”
Takomi was already pulling off her gloves and unlatching her armor.
“I’m surprised to hear you were thinking at all. Come on. Let’s go debrief.”
They checked in their training rifle and sidearm at the armory. Though the weapons were replicas, their Sentinel Armor was fully functional battle gear. The suit’s augmented reality and ultrasonic haptic feedback made them equally useful in battle and in training.
The training center’s conference room was dimly lit as they took their places on one of the benches. A tall blond woman with Scandinavian features took the floor in front of them. Tawny Drexel was one of the ship’s best combat instructors, and the fact that she was conducting the debrief made Gideon’s shoulders relax. She would be harsh but fair and to the point. The verbal lashing wouldn’t be drawn out all day.
A map of the training scenario appeared on the wall behind her.
“The only good thing about that atrocity out there is that you all died quickly. If you lot weren’t the youngest aionians aboard the ship, I would have thought I was watching a bunch of ten year olds.”
Tawny proceeded to tear into them, using maps and camera footage as evidence of their incompetence. Gideon got a good tongue lashing for his slow response as lookout, but Takomi received an even harsher lecture for choosing a bad NAV point and rushing out into the open with her team.
The opposing team wasn’t spared either. According to Tawny, Takomi’s team was so exposed that they should have been able to wipe them out without too much difficulty and with no casualties on their side. Since he’d been behind cover, Gideon was the only one on his team to live long enough to log any kills.
The lot of them were assigned two extra hours of drill later in the week to correct their incompetence, and then they were dismissed.
Gideon followed Takomi out of the training center and onto the platform overlooking the biosphere of the Leviathan. Before them lay fields and h
ouses, shops and offices, all glued to the interior of a giant cylindrical drum spinning through space. The autopod network, magnetic rails that carried passenger and cargo pods, crisscrossed the entire structure on elevated pylons. Directly below them, a blue lake glittered in the artificial sunlight, fed by a river that coiled its way down the length of the biosphere. The entire world of Leviathan was visible from any point within it, with horizons curving up and away to loop around over themselves. It was the only world that Gideon and the other Voidborns knew, a world that was just a giant tube flying through space.
This training platform, situated halfway up the wall at the stern of the biosphere, was close to the central axis, and therefore experienced a lower relative gravity compared to the valley. It was used to simulate low-gravity bodies, such as moons. Zero-g and spaceflight training took place all the way up inside the axis.
Gideon had to try hard to keep up with Takomi. She had always been better at low-gravity locomotion. Today was especially hard, since she seemed to be trying to lose him before she reached the descender.
“Hold up,” said Gideon as she reached the lift. She rolled her eyes but held the door.
When they were both inside, she punched the button for the outer floor. The elevator moved down, and they floated in midair as gravity slowly pulled them toward the descending platform. Handholds provided a way to keep from drifting into the walls or other people due to the ship’s rotation.
“It could have been worse,” said Gideon as the increasing gravity pulled them back down to the floor.
“Yeah. It could have been better too.” Takomi stared at the closed doors. Her grip on the handhold was enough to turn her knuckles white.
“Look, I’m sorry. I was distracted. It won’t happen again.”
“It better not.” She glared at him. “What was your deal, anyway? You’re usually a stone cold killer in the sims.”
Gideon opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything before he closed it again.
Takomi raised an eyebrow. “What’s wrong?”
Had anyone else asked, Gideon would have lied. But Takomi would see right through it. “I don’t know. Yesterday, I thought I heard my mom talking to Doctor Marcus about something. Could be nothing, but I keep thinking about it.”
The lift came to a stop, and they stepped out into normal gravity.
“What was it?”
Gideon ran his hand through his hair. “Doctor Marcus came over to my house yesterday all worked up about something. I overheard him talking to my mom about somebody... wanting to sabotage the ship or something.”
“Sabotage the ship? Why? How?”
“I couldn’t tell. It was hard to hear what they were saying.”
“Gideon, why would anyone want to sabotage the ship? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“That’s why I said it’s probably nothing. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“And this is why you got distracted in training? You really thought something would happen to Leviathan?”
“You’re right, it was stupid. How about we promise not to bring it up anymore? Don’t tell anyone I said anything.”
Takomi laughed as an autopod raced toward them and coasted to a stop at the platform. “Deal. As long as you promise to cover me next time.”
Gideon stepped in and instructed the autopod to carry them back to his residential block.
“It was just kind of weird Doctor Marcus showed up at my house, you know?”
“Maybe he’s got a thing for your mom.”
“Funny. Seriously though, why would he—?”
The autopod came to a sudden halt, throwing them forward. An alarm sounded, followed by the roar of distant thunder. The doors swung open, and an emergency ladder popped out and rolled to the ground.
Off in the distance, at the north end of the biosphere, a fireball erupted right out of the wall of Central Command. Alarms rang out across the biosphere, warning them of the one thing that was never supposed to happen, and that every soul aboard the Leviathan feared. It meant they needed to find an emergency station, fast, because there was a possible hull breach.
Gideon and Takomi shared a two-second look of sheer panic before their training kicked in and they moved to the exit. It seemed to take forever to get down the swinging emergency ladder. They both jumped down the last couple of meters to the field below. The closest emergency shelter was only twenty yards away, unsurprising considering they were scattered all through the biosphere. They sprinted to the squat building, and Takomi pounded her fist on the outer airlock release. The door hissed open.
A few moments later, the inner airlock door opened and they entered the shelter. It was grey, windowless, and big enough for twenty people. Lockers lined the walls, each one stuffed with an Environmental Disaster Survival Suit, or EDSS, along with other survival gear. Years of drills ensured the two of them could don their suits in minutes. They entered their personal IDs into their suits’ wrist pads, activating their location systems and alerting the emergency computer that they were alive and accounted for.
Safe from the immediate danger of depressurization, Gideon and Takomi could do nothing but wait. They both knew that, given the massive volume of the biosphere, complete depressurization could take hours, or even days, depending on the size of the breach. But other dangers existed after an explosion, such as uncontrollable fires or radiation leaks. So they sat in the emergency shelter, watching the status screen blink “EMERGENCY: SHELTER IN PLACE AND STAND BY FOR INSTRUCTIONS.”
Takomi tried to say something to Gideon, but the emergency suits muffled her words and she soon gave up. In the minutes that passed, increasingly disturbing scenarios haunted Gideon’s mind. His eyes kept returning to the hatch in the middle of the floor. If the unimaginable happened, and the screen flashed the words “ABANDON SHIP,” they would open the hatch and make their way through the tunnels leading to the nearest shuttle. After that, life would get pretty interesting. If they couldn’t repair the ship from outside, they would slowly die of starvation, dehydration, or oxygen deprivation in the shuttles. They were life rafts that could never reach land, and no one would come to the rescue.
A sharp elbow in the ribs from Takomi brought him back. The screen had changed. “REMOVE EDSS, CODE IN, AND STAND BY FOR INSTRUCTIONS.”
Gideon shoulders slumped. He forced himself to relax, as he and Takomi helped each other out of their suits. The fireball coming out of Central Command had seemed huge, but he wondered if it was as bad as he thought. It was possible his mind had exaggerated the danger in the time they’d waited.
“What do you think happened?” Takomi’s voice was barely a whisper, yet it cut through the silent emergency shelter like a thunderclap.
“I don’t know. I wish they’d tell us.”
Silence resumed as they stared at the blank status display for what seemed like hours.
“Do you think...,” said Takomi with an uncomfortable pause. “Do you think it was what you were talking about before?”
Gideon grimaced. That was exactly what he’d been wondering, but hearing her say it tied his stomach in knots. “I hope not.”
His mind couldn’t process what had just happened, let alone why. The conversation ended, and they continued to sit in silence.
Time passed as Gideon’s mind descended in a spiral of ever-darkening theories. The whir of air filters provided the only background noise. He was contemplating the possibility of the air filters failing when the outer airlock door hissed. A minute later, the inner door slid open.
A man with spiked black hair and a thin goatee entered, followed by a tall redheaded woman. It was Hiro and Diana Tsukamoto, Takomi’s parents.
“Mom, Dad!” Takomi jumped out of her seat and threw her arms around Hiro’s neck. Diana joined them in the family embrace as Gideon rose to his feet. Before he could say anything, Diana pulled him into the group hug.
“I’m so glad you two are all right,” said Diana. “You must be worried out of your minds.”
“What’s going on out there?” asked Takomi when the hug broke up.
Hiro Tsukamoto, usually jovial and smiling, furrowed his brow and frowned. “There was an explosion in the satellite lab. They think one of the fusion reactors overloaded, but it’s too early to tell.”
Hiro turned to look at Gideon, his lip trembling slightly. He put a hand on Gideon’s shoulder. “Your father wanted to tell you this, but he’s needed on the bridge. He asked Diana and me to be the ones to tell you.”
Gideon felt suddenly hot. “Tell me what?”
Diana put her hand on his other shoulder, taking over for her husband. “Two people were killed in the explosion. Doctor Byron Marcus, and your mother.”
CHAPTER THREE
The Funeral
THE ADVANTAGE OF living in an artificial world was that for special events the weather could be altered to fit the occasion. The day of the funeral was sunny and warm, with a gentle breeze rustling the maple leaves in the small cemetery. Only eighteen graves dotted the grassy plot of land next to the river, including the two new ones.
The headstones for Gideon’s mother and Doctor Marcus were decorative in nature, since the explosion had ripped the bodies apart and jettisoned their remains into the Void. Instead of bodies, they interred a box containing notes and mementos from those who cared enough to leave something.
The beautiful weather was a slap to the face for Gideon. All things lovely and happy pricked at him like the thorns of a rosebush. It didn’t matter that nearly all three thousand inhabitants of the Leviathan had come out to honor the dead. Tomorrow, their lives would continue like normal, while Gideon would have to live with a crater in his soul.
Hills curved around the cemetery, forming a natural amphitheater. People stood or sat on the grass, looking down on the family and close friends of the newly departed. Father Diego de las Casas was speaking about souls and God and everlasting paradise, but as Gideon stood next to his mother’s headstone, he barely noticed the words. His unfocused eyes stared forward at nothing, and he had the urge to find the nearest airlock and join his mother in the Void.